Exploring the nature of boundaries was the starting point for the design of a single family residence in Nashville, Tennessee. As evident in both the city and the site, the perception of the line between the order of the city and the order of nature must continually respond to the changing urban fabric and the way in which it is inhabited. Just as urban growth left traces of past boundaries, the house, with its' fortress-like street façade and otherwise more transparent courtyard facade, becomes a new threshold between the community itself and the inner sanctum of the private courtyard. Our project attempts to exist as a new boundary between the order of the city and the natural order of the wilderness.

Photos: Erich Koyama

For our approach to the design of a single family dwelling in Venice, California, we chose to explore the relationship between the interior spaces of a living environment and the exterior contextual condition. Conceptually, the windows, as a moment of literal connection between the interior and exterior conditions, become a means of capturing the outdoor environment onto the building surfaces to enhance the interior experience - an inverted borrowed landscape.

We carefully chose, both the room locations as well as the shape, location and orientation of the openings at each room location, such that each one presents a carefully edited piece of nature as it relates to the different site adjacencies. Whether a slice of sky, a boulder placed just outside in the back garden, a flower bed, or even a fragment of an adjacent structure, each opening presents its carefully framed piece of nature and exterior condition. The resultant whole is a house which acts as a multifaceted, visual screen, bringing selected pieces of nature to the user, by which the user creates his or her own connection with nature as a whole.

Photos: Erich Koyama

"Architects live and move within the narrow limits of academic requirements and in ignorance of new ways of building...architecture is stifled by custom...the use of thick walls, which in earlier days was a necessity, has persisted, although thin partitions of glass or brick can enclose a ground wall with 50 stories above it... The steam ship is the first stage in the realization of a world organized according to the new spirit."

"Towards A New Architecture" - Le Corbusier


Taking the lesson to heart, we organized the spaces required by our client, in a way that made more sense than the conventional organization offered by the existing conditions and typical floor plans by approaching the design solution to the small space as one would a ship or even a small boat, where every inch counts, and many things have to do double duty. Rather than conventional walls, the spaces are articulated by thin plywood panels, which bend and fold to accommodate shelving or storage or let in light, whatever is required at any given point. One such panel folds to accommodate a sink, which is fabricated to fit into the language of the panel. Another wall makes a place for the tub by virtue of changing material and creating a soffit. The small room that enclosed the toilet could serve admirably as a library as well. The final result is in no way the typical master suite, but rather a series of insertions that took their form as a specific response to the programmatic requirement.

Photos 1, 2, 3, 5: Erich Koyama
Photo 4: Marvin Rand

"Since my recent retirement, my wife and I have enjoyed many changes in our daily routines. We would like our new house to become an expression of how we now live and how we imagine experiencing our immediate environment. Most importantly, we would like to live in spaces that allow us to experience and enjoy the changing natural light throughout the day as we go about our daily rituals.

From our morning routine of showering, coffee, breakfast, reading the paper, checking e-mail to our afternoon rituals of napping, reading, cocktails, dinner, an occasional cigar, and watching old movies, our hope in doing this project is to create expressions of these activities through the spaces of the house."
-the client


It was our intent to rigorously map each element of our clients' daily ritual (their experience as it related to time of day and activity) along with the corresponding direction and quality of the light at the precise moment of that experience. In doing so, we can define and map a sense of place - a place through which Mitchell Thomashow, in Ecological Identity explains "we construct our personal identities, relate to the landscape, and determine what is important in our lives." He goes on to say that "To have a sense of place is to merge our personal geography with the ecological landscape, [and] incorporate maps of memory with how we dwell..."

Concept: When presented with the challenge of converting an existing 2-story office building in Venice to a new video and audio post-production recording facility, we began the design process by articulating the technically introverted recording and mixing rooms as autonomous buildings placed within the existing interior environment of the overall building shell. The residual landscape created between the existing shell and these new "buildings" reads as both interior lounge and exterior plaza.

Influence: In hand held to thin ice ..., by artist Andy Goldsworthy, a thin sheet of ice is found leaning against a rock at the water's shore. Before the ice can fail due to the passing of time and rise in temperature, Goldsworthy makes a deliberate gesture of placing his hand on the center of the sheet of ice. The handprint, as an object, has its own inherent identity but is more than simply a new spatial presence on the sheet of ice. Though the ice would melt on its own with only the changing environmental conditions, it is the gesture of making the handprint that directly affects the way in which the ice fails; buckling as it thaws on a plane at the center of the imprint.

Project: In the case of our project, the gesture of placing autonomous sound rooms into the existing 6000 sf building volume directly affects the reading of the interior environment and blurs the otherwise distinctive line between interior and exterior spaces. Each of the three recording rooms was designed from a central optimal listening point outward. Using ideal geometries to locate speakers, walls, and surfaces for the reflection and absorption of sound, the perimeter shape and character of each recording room is defined by the centralized technical requirements of an ideal listening environment.

Each of the sound rooms becomes a three dimensional object (a building) placed within - yet isolated from - the perimeter walls that define the existing building shell. The residual spaces outside of the recording rooms and within the existing shell walls are by contrast not defined by autonomous and self-referential geometries. Rather, they become fluid urban landscapes that resemble the experience of an outdoor environment not unlike an urban plaza or street.

Just as the character and reading of the sheet of ice is impacted by the gesture of the handprint within its borders and the environment beyond, the character and reading of what was once a singular interior environment is transformed by the gesture of insertion.

Photos: Marvin Rand